"A Letter Considering Toleration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Locke John)

penalties, there can be no bounds put to it; but it will in the same
manner be lawful to alter everything, according to that rule of
truth which the magistrate has framed unto himself. No man
whatsoever ought, therefore, to be deprived of his terrestrial
enjoyments upon account of his religion. Not even Americans, subjected
unto a Christian prince, are to be punished either in body or goods
for not embracing our faith and worship. If they are persuaded that
they please God in observing the rites of their own country and that
they shall obtain happiness by that means, they are to be left unto
God and themselves. Let us trace this matter to the bottom. Thus it
is: An inconsiderable and weak number of Christians, destitute of
everything, arrive in a Pagan country; these foreigners beseech the
inhabitants, by the bowels of humanity, that they would succour them
with the necessaries of life; those necessaries are given them,
habitations are granted, and they all join together, and grow up
into one body of people. The Christian religion by this means takes
root in that country and spreads itself, but does not suddenly grow
the strongest. While things are in this condition peace, friendship,
faith, and equal justice are preserved amongst them. At length the
magistrate becomes a Christian, and by that means their party
becomes the most powerful. Then immediately all compacts are to be
broken, all civil rights to be violated, that idolatry may be
extirpated; and unless these innocent Pagans, strict observers of
the rules of equity and the law of Nature and no ways offending
against the laws of the society, I say, unless they will forsake their
ancient religion and embrace a new and strange one, they are to be
turned out of the lands and possessions of their forefathers and
perhaps deprived of life itself. Then, at last, it appears what zeal
for the Church, joined with the desire of dominion, is capable to
produce, and how easily the pretence of religion, and of the care of
souls, serves for a cloak to covetousness, rapine, and ambition.

Now whosoever maintains that idolatry is to be rooted out of any
place by laws, punishments, fire, and sword, may apply this story to
himself. For the reason of the thing is equal, both in America and
Europe. And neither Pagans there, nor any dissenting Christians
here, can, with any right, be deprived of their worldly goods by the
predominating faction of a court-church; nor are any civil rights to
be either changed or violated upon account of religion in one place
more than another.

But idolatry, say some, is a sin and therefore not to be
tolerated. If they said it were therefore to be avoided, the inference
were good. But it does not follow that because it is a sin it ought
therefore to be punished by the magistrate. For it does not belong
unto the magistrate to make use of his sword in punishing
everything, indifferently, that he takes to be a sin against God.
Covetousness, uncharitableness, idleness, and many other things are
sins by the consent of men, which yet no man ever said were to be
punished by the magistrate. The reason is because they are not